Monday, October 9, 2017

Event alert: Heddy Keith with a healing memoir, Resmaa Menekam on racialized trauma, Eric Ehrke on peace and wellness, Yrsa Daley-Ward's insightful poetry, and Anne Marie Ackermann at the Wauwatosa Public Library

Here's what's happening at Boswell!

Monday, October 9, 7 pm, at Boswell: Heddy Keith, author of Through It All: A Memoir of Love and Loss, cosponsored by Milwaukee Writer's Circle.

Heddy Keith is a retired Milwaukee Public Schools language arts teacher and a Certified Hypnotherapist and instructor for the National Guild of Hypnotists. She's also the founder and president of the Milwaukee Writer’s Circle.

Now she presents her new memoir, Through it All. As a young girl, Keith found love but lost it unexpectedly. 37 years later, inspired by her heart attack and her daughter’s question: “Mama, Louise Hays says heart trouble is a result of holding onto longstanding emotional hurt. What emotional hurt are you holding onto?”, the divorced school teacher set out to unearth what happened to her lost love. Consumed by her desire to find out what happened, she stopped at nothing to reveal the truth and in the process, found herself.

By weaving music, memory, and words together, not only found her true self, but healed the wounds she still possessed.

Tuesday, October 10, 7 pm, at Boswell: Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, cosponsored by the Asha Project.

Resmaa Menakem is a therapist with decades of experience currently in private practice in Minneapolis, specializing in trauma, body-centered psychotherapy, and violence prevention. Now in his new book, Menakem offers a call to action for each of us to recognize that racism is not just about the head, but also about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racial divide.

According to Menakem, the body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of body-centered psychology. He argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all our bodies. Our collective agony doesn't just affect African Americans. White Americans suffer their own secondary trauma as well. So do blue Americans, our police.

The Asha Project, reborn from the ashes of Asha Family Services, works to combat gender-based violence and exploitation in our African American community. Visit their website to read more about their work.

Thursday, October 12, 7 pm, at Boswell: Eric Ehrke, author of Henosis: The Psychological Wisdom and Eternal Principles that Lead to Lasting Peace and Wellness.


Eric Ehrke received his Masters in clinical social work at Ohio State University. Since joining Therapies East Associates thirty years ago he’s taught relationship skills courses and offered Mind/Body/Spirit healing seminars. A graduate of the Family Institute of Northwestern University he embraces traditional psychotherapy and systems theory but also can merge complimentary/spiritual approaches to everyday problems.

In Eric Ehrke’s new Henosis, he combines modern psychology with ancient philosophy and traditional mind/ body/ spirit wisdom to provide readers with insights into our human experience. Original teachings, which include the Primary Love Template, the Victim/ Perpetrator paradigm and Somatic Empathy Theory addresses our infantile, childish, adolescent and mature stress responses.

Ehrke gives readers many additional strategies to embody the enduring power of love in the midst of challenging circumstances.

Friday, October 13, 7 pm, at Boswell: Yrsa Daley-Ward, author of bone.

Yrsa Daley-Ward is a writer and poet of mixed West Indian and West African heritage. Born to a Jamaican mother and a Nigerian father, Yrsa was raised by her devout Seventh Day Adventist grandparents in the small town of Chorley in the North of England.

As if mining the marrow of her own bones, Daley-Ward has condensed her journey from preadolescence to womanhood in beautifully haunting pieces. Born of Nigerian and Jamaican heritage, the poet was raised by her grandparents in the north of England, growing up exquisitely attuned to compassion and isolation in a hardscrabble world rich with leavings. In bone she grapples with epic subjects such as desire, religion, depression, abuse, and loss; navigates the raw experiences of being a first-generation black British woman; and explores the vulnerability and redemption in falling in love.

From Eve Barlow in The Observer: "Daley-Ward’s debut collection of poetry, bone, is anything but introverted. Aptly titled, it’s a visceral read candidly documenting her religious upbringing, sexuality and mental-health battles. It flew out of her in three months, as she chronicled her bad love affairs, sense of isolation and feelings of inadequacy – an uncomfortable, uninhibited read. Daley-Ward is a self-confessed firestarter and has a colorful past. She doesn’t watch TV and prefers to go to the pub to drink Guinness and 'chat to old men about their lives.' When asked to give her age, she refuses. 'Men don’t get asked,' she barks."

Saturday, October 14, 3 pm, at Wauwatosa Public Library, 7635 W. North Ave: Ann Marie Ackermann author of Death of an Assassin: The True Story of the German Murderer Who Died Defending Robert E. Lee, sponsored Goethe House Milwaukee.

Ann Marie Ackermann is a former attorney with focuses on criminal and medical law. 18 years ago she moved to Bonnigheim, Germany, the town in which the assassination occurred, and is a member of its historical society. Ackermann's intimate knowledge of the town and of the German language enabled her to bring the German and American sides of this story together.

Relying primarily on German sources, Death of an Assassin tracks the never-before-told story of this German company of Pennsylvania volunteers. It follows both Lee's and the assassin's lives until their dramatic encounter in Veracruz and picks up again with the surprising case resolution decades later.

The roles the volunteer soldier/assassin and Robert E. Lee played at the Siege of Veracruz are part of American history, and the record-breaking, 19th-century cold case is part of German history. For the first time, Death of an Assassin brings the two stories together.

Monday, October 16, 7 pm, at Boswell: David McAninch author of Duck Season: Eating, Drinking and Other Misadventures in Gascony – France’s Last Best Place, in conversation with Kyle Cherek of Wisconsin Foodie.

David McAninch is the features editor at Chicago magazine and was an editor at Saveur for nine years. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York magazine, and Rodale's Organic Life. McAninch joins us for a conversation with Wisconsin Foodie host, Kyle Cherek, to discuss his new book that tackles the love of food in the south of France.

Duck Season is a delicious memoir about the eight months food writer David McAninch spent in Gascony, a deeply rural region of France virtually untouched by mass tourism, meeting extraordinary characters and eating the best meals of his life.

With wit and warmth, McAninch takes us deep into this enchanting world, a place almost frozen in time, where eating what makes you happy isn’t a sin but a commandment—and where, to the eternal surprise of outsiders, locals’ life expectancy is higher than in any other region of France. Featuring a dozen choice recipes and beautiful line drawings, Duck Season is an irresistible treat for Francophiles and gourmands alike. From Publishers Weekly: "Through McAninch’s warm and fluid delivery, readers come away with a taste and respect for a regional commodity, a handful of enticing recipes, and a new appreciation for friendships unfettered by origin or boundary."

Kyle Cherek is host of the Emmy-nominated television show Wisconsin Foodie, beginning its seventh season on PBS and broadcast primetime to over 8.2 million households.

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